oh all right here we go
welcome to the Macworld podcast I’m Roman loyola joined by Mike Symon and
Jason Cross remotely hi guys the most important man in the room is Dan
Matsuoka hey sir hi Dan I he’s the most important man in room
because he is keeping an eye out on our twitter feed and our YouTube feeds for
your comments and questions so if you have anything you’d like to say about
the topics we’re going to talk about today please let us know type them into
YouTube and Twitter dan will keep an eye on them and he’ll chime in with what you
guys have to say so it’s the most important part of our podcast so today’s
topics we’re going to talk about some odds and some Apple news bits some
assorted news items but the two major topics we’re gonna talk about we’re
gonna talk about products that Apple should kill so killed I put the death or
as I changed the headline to put to rest but first we’re gonna talk about Spotify
and which is Apple musics major number one competitor and if anyone’s been
following the news there’s been several reports of Apple musics subscribe
subscription base growing and growing and you know they’re nipping at the
heels at Spotify and yesterday Spotify came out with some new features that
mike symon got to see up close was this this was yesterday right Mike this was
yesterday yeah so Spotify has some new stuff for its mobile app yeah I mean you
can’t get them yet I don’t think you know these apps are weird like they kind
of do like a staggered rollout right so it’s not in the iOS store it’s not in
any of my phones my Android phones yet but the major changes aren’t to the
premium service and that that’s what’s most interesting about what’s about if I
did yesterday in fact the I don’t think they mentioned premium
once in the event if they did it was just in passing it was this was all
about the free tier and you know so you can compare Apple music 70 million to
Spotify DH I’m sorry Apple musics 40 million to Spotify 70 million that’s
premium Spotify also has 90 million free users that Apple music does not have and
doesn’t seem interested in acquiring and what Spotify did yesterday is they made
that free tier real attractive to people who are paying for the service both
Spotify and Apple music they they’re gonna offer 15 playlists a day that you
can listen to whatever music you want on them the way it works now is if you’re a
free pre user you can listen to playlist but you have to listen to mine shuffle
mode so if there is you know I don’t know 70 songs on there there you’re all
over the place for so for 15 playlist a day you can pick whatever song you want
and listen to it you know a million times in a row if you’d like and that’s
a that’s a huge advantage for Spotify because you know this cost nothing it
gives you access to the same song but you have to you know you can’t listen to
them on-demand and now they’re giving some on-demand listening to therefore
users as well so I’m interested to see how how or if Apple responds to this
doesn’t doesn’t the didn’t they do something new with offline music also
well they they have a data saver it’s not okay it’s not offline per se but you
can turn on this switch and it will kind of you know cache what you listen to
most or the type of John where you live David they were a little unclear as to
how it works but it will cache either individual songs or songs they think you
might want to listen to or maybe a specific playlist that you listen to
every day something like that so you’re using less mobile data when you’re you
know not connected to Wi-Fi okay because that was the other that’s the other huge
just think you’re doing premium and free is that you cannot download tracks at
all yeah you still can’t download individual songs for listening so a
gentleman on YouTube is asking how does you two or how to Spotify make money
then they make money with ads ever you know every couple of songs you’ll hear a
fifteen second or tents that can head for some
product or they’ll have you know this playlist is sponsored by Dunkin Donuts
or something yeah and that’ll you know they’ll give
you like thirty songs for free because Dunkin Donuts paid to have their their
name on that so you know they I don’t know what the numbers are there you know
they haven’t had their first shareholders meeting after going public
so we’ll learn all that but they’d with 90 million users I’m assuming they make
pretty good money for man rights and those aren’t going away none of the ads
go away nothing but I say not going away or nor are they changing I think this is
a really interesting strategy in that Spotify number one realizes that they’re
differentiate ur is there a huge number of free users let’s get more of those by
making free so much better like more access to more music a better designed
interface that recommends music like on the fly and all the sudden stuff but
also that that’s their strategy to get paid users like if if we want people to
start ponying up for this well maybe if we make free better maybe if we make
them love Spotify more then they’ll go oh this is I really just want to be able
to download so if I want to listen to more playlists don’t whatever and
they’ll start paying money that and that goes well with their other strategy
which is to bundle up there they’re often that Lulu bundle so instead of ten
bucks for a month for Spotify and $8.99 is it for Hulu they limited commercials
I think I think he’s our son I mean so it’s so it’s 18 18 yeah so you know for
13 bucks you can get both together yeah and that’s you know another way for
them to kind of you know increase add value get more people on premium stuff
so yeah interesting strategies so degree go ahead carry no no you can go
they sent chatter on Twitter basically you know both sides which one is better
and if you think Spotify is better how could Apple improve Apple music I’m
several ways for one they need to clean up the app it’s it’s very confusing it’s
it’s it’s a it’s for Apple as far as Apple goes it’s very unintuitive and you
know there’s like settings are hidden and controls and hidden and you know
there’s always dropdowns and drop-off menus we we ran our article a couple of
months ago about like you know ten ten ways that we could fix Apple music I
think was fifteen or something we just kept going there’s so many we talked
about it on the podcast but we asked we asked this question in our poll didn’t
we like what what yeah what do you want your own Apple music so we posted a poll
yesterday and the question was what missing Apple feature Apple music
feature do you want most 48% of people wanted a free tier which isn’t
surprising everybody wants free so but of the more feature specific stuff free
tier I don’t consider free a feature so this week but of the three that we
offered as features twenty percent wanted mobile playlist editing 13
percent one and mobile data saving 19 percent which i think is actually kind
of high for for our the people who listen to our podcast echo and home
speaker support which that’s frustrating for anyone who has a smart home that’s
powered by anything other than a home pod yeah I mean it just doesn’t work
yeah yeah and that’s that’s on Apple that’s not Amazon saying no we’re not
going to allow it that’s Apple saying we don’t care about echo or Google home
yeah so people I’ll go ahead Jason I don’t think the free tiers really ever
gonna happen because I think Apple is very proud of its ability to pay artists
more right and I think that’s a part of its thing and that’s one of the things
that kind of causes it brings down the rate for everybody is that when it’s
ad-supported it’s kind of less money coming in per track and other and that’s
it’s harder to pay artists a bigger chunk for streams and I think you know
apples lever in talking to labels and stuff like that
right now is you know we weren’t giving you more money from your stream you know
so I don’t I don’t think free is coming I’m soon for that rebut it is so you
know apples may be paying more than Spotify is that getting them anything
from the labels like does it mean it’s some access yes that means less than it
used to yeah right yeah but you know it’s it’s who knows what goes on behind
the scenes of these things but you know I think that they still they want to
keep they want to keep doing that they think it’s something worth paying for
and they don’t want to they don’t want to give free outside of the radios they
they have the free you can do beats one or whenever I’m free yeah they just
don’t want until they have it just that one station for free yeah there used to
be others too yeah they had iTunes radio which was I mean that was like a Pandora
things good mm-hmm with ads and all that stuff and they just killed it yeah along
with the Twitter poll there are several comments a lot of them have to do with
file management in Apple music like there’s a problem with grayed-out tracks
that people wish would stop out that’s probably more of an iCloud thing than a
have a music iCloud this also in the way that people were complaining about what
else one thing I do like in Apple music is the ability to edit the metadata
inside the track I’m a bit you know with my music library or at least I was
before I now I have all these tracks that my wife adds up my son adds cuz we
all have that but music together but when I did I you know I like to keep
everything very very neatly organized and you’re allowed to fizzle if you’re
subscribed because you go in there yeah yeah you can go in there and edit you
know and that those changes go draw so uh library
yes or some interesting poll results i use i don’t use apple music i use
Spotify and and if I don’t use the mobile app because of a lot of you know
like the playlist limitations and things like that so when I saw the announcement
yesterday I was kind of like oh this is kind of cool and it is an interesting
approach that you know you make the free app so good that people will use it and
then you know it’s the entry point to getting a subscription to paying for it
because because you like using it so much and you want to use the additional
feature so it’s an interesting approach to okay and they’ve also streamlined the
app a little bit it’s it’s no it’s it the navigation is nicer they took away
there it’s a radio tab now there’s a premium tab so you don’t get like before
if you clicked on something it would say this is a premium feature and they would
kind of badger you now it’s kind of off to its own if you want to upgrade you
click on that it tells you all the things you get and there’s also the the
when you search because there’s all these different categories the search
for it doesn’t just send you to a blank page so it’s you know they they’ve if
you’re a premium subscriber you’ll get some some new stuff out of the app to
whenever it gets here so I guess I never really pay attention
to it but as far as the data saving a feature how much data do each of them
take for like say an hour of music you guys have a nice sense of that yeah I
mean it’s it’s hard to quantify for an hour but if you listen every day for you
know say two to two-and-a-half hours a day I mean it could be a couple gigs a
month easy yeah I mean I have t-mobile so none none of these count against my
data cap because they do the free music thing but I think as much as it is about
data it’s also just about connectivity like it’s it’s murder going through dead
spots and stuff or getting on the training go through a tunnel and stuff
like that it’s good to have that a big buffer or cache or whatever of offline
things and and you know of course Apple music will let you download any playlist
or album or track or something but it’s not automatically going like oh you’re
just streaming this playlist let me buffer up the next right ten songs or
something like that you know you have a nice big cache of stuff to save data or
something it’s not it’s not that intelligent about it yeah I mean I
suspected WDC we’ll see changes in some improvements to Apple
music we’ll see you know especially with home pod coming out this year and all
that stuff you know right still waiting for airplay – we’re still waiting for
multi-room audio so you know there’s definitely some announcements in the
wings one thing I will say that Spotify event was this straight up the best
event I ever went it was so it was so well run like I started like my clock
turned to change to 9:30 and it started like instantaneously there wasn’t this
blasting music in your face it was just great
there was no eligible people on hand that you know or ample enough to answer
everyone’s question it was it was excellent test they had good white phone
yeah they did not have the musical guest no it’s Apple always has deep musical
games yeah yeah so it’s often imagine dragons are
PW asked what about Shezan integration into Apple music yeah I mean well who
know is not that they’re being investigated by the EU into this into
the viability or the legality of this merger so we’ll see but yeah I was
actually remarking so they played music before the event obviously and I had the
pixel two with me and there’s a feature on the pixel – if people don’t know that
it automatically listens to music and tells you when songs are playing all
around you and but it’s so great like it’s just like like what’s this song it
just it’s just right there yes but it’s glad it’s all offline it’s not yeah it’s
offline you could turn it off if you mind yeah right but it’s not sending
data to Google about here’s what listening to your surroundings it just
stays on the phone it doesn’t it just keeps like 10,000 common tracks it’s way
more than it used to be very limited it but now it’s like everything like my
phone’s always banging like even in the restaurant like if it’s pretty loud and
as long usik it still can hear it and she’s awesome
yeah it’s great and been on YouTube asks do you think we will ever see a
successful music focus social platform and asked not like MySpace but he
clarified we’ve seen lots of attempts at it Apple’s Connect and Spotify his
friends think I’m not too familiar with that do you think we need somewhere to
share our favorite songs of what we’re listening to I mean
personally I’d rather see integration with oh you’re breaking up a little bit
hey Mike can you say that say that again my back I I’d rather say integration
with the you know with Twitter or with face but rather than creating a new
service are you allowed to join just make it so it’s friendly and streamlined
within the app itself and it’s not horrible now but it’s not as easy as it
could be so yeah I’d rather see Apple music say yeah we’re gonna we’re teaming
with Twitter’s with Twitter so if you just hit this button it sends out a link
to our thing you can see it in a nice web interface Spotify does it way better
than Apple music to us yeah you can find you can sort of publicly publish your
playlists on either Apple music or Spotify but I think only a Spotify you
can make it a list that you can share with other people to edit so you can
fight other people to also edit your playlist and have a collaborative
playlist and that’s not really there yet and then you know when you tweet a
playlist or an album or something from Spotify you get a nice widget where
everything plays like in the in the widget and you see the tracks and all
that stuff and you don’t get you get like album art from Apple and then a
link into the app again you can’t like just play it on the web and stuff so
yeah I think they just need to integrate better with I don’t need to join another
social network just for music like yeah I mean apples I provide this twice state
twice yeah it’s ping and then Apple connect and both of them is just kind of
and I actually think that they were more for the artists they were more for app
so Apple Apple can go into a meeting with the artist and say see you can
reach out to your fan base – yeah unless about selling it to the consumers and
trying to get the consumers to use it so I think was more of a marketing tool
that they want to pitch to but even then like an artist is gonna
reach way more people Roenick how many followers are they gonna have on any one
write network so they’ll just they’ll just tweet and Facebook and what
why yes I mean it was it’s they wanted to do exclusive video it’s an interviews
but you know that’s just a massive undertaking that’s just not necessary
yeah so I’m curious about our audience here but I’m gonna ask you guys this as
well so with all this talk about streaming how many mp3’s do you guys
have on your phones on my phone dies zeros I have nothing on my phone like
you mean like physically basically because I mean you used to have to just
add all your you know and that’s why we needed I feel like one of the reasons
why we needed you know larger phone storage right threes and also photos
yeah but that was a huge a huge part with music yeah and my iCloud library
I’ve like 25,000 but in my on my phone I don’t keep any anymore because I don’t
need to yeah I used to rip a bunch of albums and all that other stuff and have
a huge I don’t even have that on my computer anymore like I didn’t bother
transferring it to my new computer it’s all sitting on the disk somewhere
because I can’t bear to throw it away but it’s like enough that I never use it
yeah I have I have an external hard drive that’s just music from like three
years ago but I don’t yeah I don’t I don’t touch it anymore because it’s all
there yeah yeah I think I have like 20 albums on my on my phone so that’s
probably what yeah but I mostly do stream so those 20 albums are like
albums that like you know they’re my favorites and I actually don’t listen to
them very often you know it’s yeah so no it’s mostly
being able are they not available for streaming you just like them I just like
having them and you know so like having yeah I’m always adding new music to my
life like constantly things that I’m you know I might read somewhere like that’s
what’s great about music and spotify is that you can you can hear about a new
artist you know how to somehow do I want to spend I’m ten buck oh might cut out
again yeah also sometimes I often you know I
I’ll listen to my own music while I’m playing a game or something and you know
like I’ll turn off the audio for the game itself so I can listen to that
music and I don’t want and sometimes the games are streaming or whatever so I you
know to cut down on the amount of data that I’m downloading so it doesn’t
affect game performance I’ll listen to the album that’s on my on my phone so
yeah so that’s you know but like I said I don’t listen they’re all my phone but
they’re more like just their I don’t know when the last time I’ve listened to
one of those albums to be honest yeah it’s mostly streaming now so I’m
thinking about like you know like the memes but like you know what kids will
we’ll never know and one of those is like but all the
time spent renaming files album what about you Dan do you have any songs
actually on your phone no I mean the only thing I listen to now is streaming
so it’s either podcasts or Spotify and we used to have Apple music but now we
switched to Spotify yeah like the family account so yeah yeah
yeah be interesting to see what Apple does in response especially because you
know streaming is the way to go and there’s been there have been rumors of
Apple offering a streaming service you know to either replace or complement
their current iTunes offerings so it’s a interesting competition that’s happening
right now so and I mean the big question is Apple video whatever they got to call
it right what it would TV how that integrates with all this yeah how are
they gonna yeah how they get a service and and charge you for all this original
content they’re producing dozens of shows it’s crazy
yeah I mean that that’s the thing apple offers all these you know entertainment
services and they’re all accessed through iTunes so and it’s kind of
iTunes has become this Claridge and maybe it’s a product that should be
killed that’s not what you did in there so
today we posted an article about article by Jason cross on five products that
Apple should put the rest with all these product announcements that have been
coming out there there are a few products that continue to be in Apple’s
family that haven’t been updated in a while or maybe they’re they’ve maybe
need to be seriously updated and we in revisited in a different way and Jason
kinda went through five of those products and so Jason do you want to
talk about should we just go down the list
how about numbers yeah so I was thinking about this like Apple made printers for
years and years and their printers were good but there just comes a point when
the Moore’s intranet heard that it’s good because everybody else is making a
good whatever or it becomes a commodity object or it’s just not filling the role
that it needs to feel like they’re xserve blade servers and stuff where you
just go like well in order to do new opportunities and everything let’s let’s
get rid of that and focus on these other things so it’s not like I’m saying these
are bad product now because a lot of people love whatever you know these
products and stuff and I understand that it’s just that they just don’t fill the
role they use they’re bad in 2018 exactly or just just not necessary or
not necessary enough to devote the time to so I mean so I okay that the
low-hanging fruit here is the routers why is that while making routers like I
don’t even know that they are making I have a warehouse full of them but
they’re still selling three routers like on their site today you can buy brand
new airport routers well brand new is kind of like yeah no one is
and then the extremes are the extreme in the time capsule RAC there’s no ad
routers which is and then of course ax and and mesh routers are the new hotness
now that’s what I personally I’d love to see Apple take a stab at a mesh router I
mean because I think you can really do it well but they’re just I just feel
like there’s plenty other companies doing it well my problem with routers is
always like when you need to troubleshoot something you need to get
into settings and you look at Apple settings and they’re terrible they’re
just you know they’re Apple’s good at let’s make something attractive that’s
just like you plug it in and it works but then when it you need to dig into it
and and routers are one of those things where you really need to get in those
setting pages sometimes and they just can’t that’s it so I just feel like
there’s so many other companies doing well it’s such a different thing there
were rumors a couple years ago that they killed the division but if that’s true
they’re still selling a product that they don’t have a team working right
which is not good either right so I love that the time capsule is a router with
like a built-in hard drive that’s just automatic for time machine but I you can
also just any hard drive on your network you can use time machine for so I’d
rather see them instead of making a router making Apple network attached
storage device which is not a router or anything but fits in between right now
NASA’s are like there’s cheap NASA’s that are like this is a USB hard drive
wire wise what’s special about this and then they’re just expensive passes from
big and they suck down a lot of power and you know you gotta find a big space
in your closet for em and so there’s I think there’s room in between there for
a middle-grade like not too expensive high-performance
network attached storage device to use those media servers and hold all your
video editing data and all this other stuff and it would fit well into Apple’s
sort of pro-am marketplace and and could convince you know regular people that
having storage on your network is a home network is a thing that regular home
people could do because us nerds do that kind of
you know it would be wonderful for me to have a product I could tell my mom just
plug this into your network and you can store all your photos or whatever on
there she’s always worried about like all that stuff disappearing from her Mac
yeah how did they get that icon money’s yeah that’s a whole other you know
separate thing they need to do and they could have iCloud backup for it or
whatever they want to do but I mean they don’t even do i quad the iCloud backup
isn’t even for me you can’t even put Mac stuff on your iCloud backup that’s
that’s separate no no I yeah that’s I’m just talking about like photos yeah yeah
so yeah I mean I if they do anything I’d rather see them taking different stab
than making around her so that’s number one is the easy one it’s not making
routers yeah it is kind of weird how it continues and like it’s still there and
you can find it on the website and you know the rumors of the product team
being disbanded and everything and by all accounts it’s it’s a dead product
but it continues to live on I mean dearly yeah what but why you know it’s
it’s not like that will kill Fort Apple can’t afford to just say all right that
warehouse that we have of a million routers you know will bury them and
let’s make a robot to disassemble them and it’s also a little messed up to
unsuspecting consumers who might be new to Apple guy and iPhone I got an apple
router and he had buying a three year old product right that we don’t know
dates and security updates and all this stuff very well it’s yeah yeah so next
one of sir iPad Mini I think a lot of people like their iPad Mini but I mean
he was introduced to the phones were all little four-inch phones and the iPads
were way more expensive and they were heavy
you know big and heavy and you can’t hold them with one hand and it made a
lot of sense to have enough now the iPad Mini it’s been sitting there for three
years not changed at all it’s almost as expensive as the nine point seven inch
iMac which is a million times faster and supports the pencil and stuff
iPads so iPads are cheaper now they’re lighter weight by half
for something by 30 40 percent I think lighter than they used to be and phones
are bigger and it just doesn’t feel like it’s big that gap really needs to be
filled that price gap and that you know size gap really needs to be filled there
they don’t obviously don’t care enough about it to like update it every other
year anything so yeah I think they could get rid of iPad Mini and just focus on
making the regular iPad you know get the bezel size down a little bit and get the
weight lighter and stuff and just keep that your affordable option I was gonna
say that iPad Mini is 399 yeah it’s more expensive but they only sell 128 gig to
give you the head height well that’s why it’s more expensive but yeah and it’s
you know it’s three years old processor and stuff it’s ya know Apple to play
devil’s advocate a big it I have a six year old and he loves my old iPad Mini
mm-hmm so I there’s a there’s a there’s a spot for it it’s too expensive lost
luggage because he’s talked Davises cut the price in half
I don’t think Apple’s ever gonna saw $150 iPad of any type or – $200 one one
make it make it the new iPod Touch kill the iPod Touch and and cut the price of
the Mini or something cuz I think that’s I think a kid it would be more happy
with an iPad Mini than they would be with the tiny iPod Touch that’s true but
I think I think it’s at 329 or they’ll just just I think the regular iPad is
the solution free for kids I mean sure it’s important stuff you know I think I
have both and my kid gravitates to the mini because it’s a perfect for his
little hands it’s like a perfect size the iPhones a little bit too small on
the iPads a little bit too big it’s like goalie rocks yeah the iPad Mini is is
are I have I think it’s like that iPad Mini 2
alright cuz they’re on the floor now right it’s the most recently yeah and
should be six put is good for right yeah but I have like the two and it’s it’s
our coffee table I’ve had many it and it’s good for just
you know it’s the perfect size for like wait what was that and then you look it
up yeah and then you just put it down but at the same time we also have our
phones in our pockets it’s you know what I don’t understand is why is Apple just
utterly ignored it like what’s why but yeah they update everything else I think
there’s just it’s they they to maybe see that you know with phones getting bigger
they look at what the sales are of it and with that regular iPad getting so
much cheaper and being so much more capable I think that that’s what they’re
focused on so yeah I think that’s controversial but I just think that
that’s one of those things where it’s like it’s just not enough benefit to
enough people but you brought up the iPad touch and that was one of the other
things on the list yeah the iPod it’s the last remaining
iPad it’s an iPhone without the phone but it’s like an really old old iPhone
it’s not cheap it’s still it’s not that cheap 79 or to 300 which is 32 gigabytes
it’s $1.99 128 it’s $2.99 yeah and and I think and and it’s you know small and
stuff and I think that the the the attraction of before the world was all
uh music streaming you know you needed a thing to carry your music and it was fun
having something oh it’s also uses all these iOS apps and that was good but now
the only attraction seems to be like well I don’t want to give my kid a phone
right I’ll give them this and then I think and I think kids really need and
want and gravitate more toward iPads which are now cheap and I think that
fills that role better so I think they can just finally get rid of iPod as I
mean the biggest problem I think I’m right isn’t it not even an iPhone 6 like
it’s still an iPhone 5 right yes so they had like if they haven’t that’s three
year that’s three years ago they have with the new screen like I mean I think
for for 150 or 200 hours I think the iPod probably has its place but
does just know there’s no support there and you’re buying so what does it have
like an a7 processor it has eight megapixel camera yeah as the bad the bad
camera come on it’s just like if it’s going to exist spend you know put three
people on a team and make it worthwhile but the the converse of that is that if
you if they really update it to much better hardware that would make it be
like oh this is really worth it then they’re not gonna be able to solve for
$1.99 and now you’re just an iPad territory oh yeah
toca I don’t want it to be a 9 for 10 I wanted to be nine point six difference
yeah even though they get $200 iPhone 6 I’m quite sure no you don’t think so not
at Apple’s margins so I just yeah I just don’t think it’s I just don’t think it
has a lot of place you know in its price and its capabilities and that were just
focus on making iPads cheap and doesn’t it also have like maybe it’s the
previous iPod it has like an attachment for a lanyard but but like I think so
yeah it’s like a retractable it’s like a thing that pops out but I mean maybe it
was the previous general yeah and it doesn’t even have touch ID right it’s a
home button it does have Siri yeah we can’t take it everywhere why would you
touch which connector does it have I use the old the long flat one no it’s a
lightning it’s a 4-inch display yeah okay how great would that be if it was
it still had the old cable for all the people who bought like email who bought
like this the speaker system that has the docking and they still need to have
connected to something that’s who it’s for you know yeah or they just have old docks yep
what was the other what was the other oh so I – all right oh I think maybe I
think yeah we had iTunes was on there but maybe the most most controversial
one that you had on there was the Mac Mini yellow yeah yeah and I am not
opposed to the role that the act Mac Mini is supposed to fill which is it’s
an affordable way to buy and like a headless Mac IMAP and though not monitor
or anything like that people use them as media servers people say oh I just want
to cheap Mac I can hook up for my parents who don’t know anything and just
with this old monitor or something and that’s fine but it’s not number one it’s
not really that cheap yes they start at 500 and what you get for $500 is not
great hardware like it’s it’s old it’s like a core i3 or something they won’t
notice I 5 generations old and yeah yeah they can’t hold a lot of storage so
they’re not great media servers unless you plug in on USB hard drive and now
it’s just like well just plug up hard drive in your router I mean just right
there’s a lot of it doesn’t fill the role that people want it to feel really
well and I think that as it exists it needs to go away and if Apple wants to
continue to do this like small really small compact Mac thing they need to go
one of two ways the it need they need to actually do something that is innovative
it was innovative when it was new it’s not an innovative idea anymore
they either need to go high-end like there’s the Intel nuke the new what does
it stand for me something of computing and you see that in so and it’s a almost
the size of a Mac Mini but it’s a really high-end and there are like a thousand
dollars or something but if you wanted to buy it it blows the doors off of the
low-end IMAX I mean it’s that thing is great so they either need to do
something like that like oh wow I can’t believe you get so much power in this
small form-factor something that’s really truly usable as
a for the next five years for somebody or
innovate the other way look at Intel compute stick which they don’t make
anymore but they did that up to a couple years ago it’s I’ll stick the size of a
large chromecast with an HDMI click on it and you just plug it into a TV or a
monitor or whatever and it’s got a full computer in there with wireless
accessories in a couple USB ports and stuff that would be an amazing that
price yeah Mac product really loves to see that a Mac you can put in your
pocket I mean that’s literally you can see them Tim Cook on stage take it out
of his jeans pocket oh yeah let me introduce you to the new Mac and and
it’s that would be the greatest thing I’m I’m actually a little surprised they
haven’t done that would it be you know the fire stick is out and like you know
this that type of tech is mainstream now and if that did that with you know I
don’t know 128 gig Mac that would just be amazing exactly in Phil’s computer
especially since now they’re so into cloud storage streaming everythings
wireless accessories they’re already the rest of their ecosystem is already set
for you know a computer that doesn’t have a ton of storage or anything like
that that’s really affordable but it’s a full neck and run the Mac OS and
everything that would be amazing and you know so I think Mac Mini is that
exists needs to go away and they need to decide if we’re gonna make something
that’s not an iMac where can we be innovative again ever go in a different
direction than what the iMac made the Mac Mini is now right
maybe 2019 will be the year of the Mac we’ll see I mean when the Mac Mini first
came out the Apple heavily pushed it as the switchers computer if you were on a
PC here’s how you can switch over at a Mac and you know that was they leaned on
that heavily as a marketing point and then the iPhone came out and so now I
think apples way of getting people onto the Mac is through the iPhone and not
necessarily saying yeah right yeah their services is
this is what’s meant to grow right so at the time of a five hundred dollar Mack
was a big deal Brian you don’t remember what the initial price of the first Mac
Mini was but it was it was I think it was five hundred sheep I mean there
weren’t as many you can’t you couldn’t just go buy any $400 laptop like you can
now I can walk into Best Buy and buy a four dollar laptop yeah so it’s not not
a Mac if we’re not so it’s not the competitive exactly yeah exactly yeah so
the first Mac Mini came out September 20 2005 the base model was $4.99 yeah that
was a better known as the computer that killed think secret if anyone remembers
that that company that was a website back in the day that that was the that
was the rumor that Apple you know plugged away and ended up suing them and
shutting them down yeah and then of course the last one was iTunes which you
know has become such a bloated mess of a it’s it’s a poster child for like bloat
in an application bloat it was a storefront for music and now it does
everything it plays videos and you buy video and you listen to podcasts and you
buy audiobooks and you do I mean and they’ve already determined the right
way to fix this on ILS yeah right there’s per one app that’s just the
store yeah and then there’s a music app for playing music and the TV app for
playing video and there’s the iTunes U and the podcast app they broke them into
separate silos of like here’s an app that can concentrate on these things
they can take those exact things and do them on the Mac and then all they need
is a utility but like strictly a utility app that does your you know local
backups and firmware updates and stuff like that that you need to put if you
ever need to plug your your iPhone into your computer and do a repair you know
where every still learn something you know and then if they had if iOS and and
Mac OS were the same in that way think of all the cool stuff they can do with
handoff and everything mmm-hmm it’s tricky to do right now
because there it’s so different so yeah iTunes as it exists needs to go yeah
yeah I mean that’s been a best bit of rallying call for us for quite some time
I mean it’s and he just keeps getting like every year they come out with their
their update and it’s just again works they got rid of a lot of stuff in what
was it the latest one in the one that came with highs here along with highs
here at 12 they got rid of a few things Ryan you can’t even this is you can’t
even buy iOS apps anymore through iTunes is that correct right that’s what they
got rid of they got the Iowa store and the managing your your apps your Apple
and all that stuff yeah yeah which I actually kind of miss so because well a
separate issue is there’s no reason the Iowa’s App Store shouldn’t exist on the
web they have the app listings on the web but then it like but you can’t
search for anything unless you go against you you can’t search you can’t
buy there and there’s no reason I can’t be logged in to my iCloud account on the
web hit by download it too so androids been doing this for years I can only
assume that there’s some stupid patent or something getting in Apple’s way cuz
it’s so obvious that I can’t imagine why they’re not doing it yeah but yeah check
out Jason’s article on our website it’s on the home page right now we also put a
link to it and our show notes for the podcast article let us know what you
guys think is our product II absolutely think should not die like you really do
love the airport router you don’t want it to die well they definitely don’t
want the Mac Mini today a lot of people don’t want the assume that a lot of
people are gonna say that and just read my justification cuz I don’t I don’t I
don’t want them to kill the market servers right the concept the thing that
they’re they were originally to address with the Mac Mini that I
don’t think it fits anymore I think they just need to do it in a different way
the mains to evolve yeah I can’t imagine anybody would disagree with that yeah I
mean that’s just it needs it needs more than an upgrade right we don’t it’s not
just a chip and a couple new ports like the whole Mac Mini needs to be rethought
before yes exactly agreed well I’d like to see is a Mac
Mini in the shape of like like an oversized disk or coined but it you know
and it just has the Apple logo on it that’s like chromecast back to your TV
that would be kind of cool so yeah let us know what you guys think some other
odds and ends it’s been kind of a slowish week for Apple nears so we’re
just gonna go through a couple of a few important more important announcements
that have been announced like yesterday Apple released updates for iOS 11.3 and
Mac OS 10.30 now for majority of those updates were security updates there was
some speculation that maybe these updates were to address the was the
great key box yeah yeah so in case anybody doesn’t know that so last week
or actually maybe it’s been more than a week I forget it was it was it vice
revealed that this company has this product that can crack iPhones and
Napoleon police departments have been using this device it’s called the grey
key I mean they’ve been around for a while but this is one where they say
they can crack even the latest hardware and the latest versions of iOS yeah and
it takes a few hours or something but yeah it’s a physical device you plug in
the Lightning ports it’s a box yeah and they offer service where I
think for certain devices you have to send it to them right and to send it to
the company but they’re popular law enforcement of all types from everywhere
from your Sheriff’s Department up to the feds use them for for various things and
you know this is Apple’s always against this guy
thing so yeah and I think essentially the gray key is and I don’t know this
for sure and actually I from what I’ve read nobody actually really knows
because nobody’s gotten their hands on but they think there might be poly just
jailbreaking the devices to get access to them and so possibly but that’s not
supposed to be able to be done yeah it’s not like you have if you have you
protected already out of you you got it you got to break that protection in
order to jailbreak yeah that’s supposed to be the idea you’re not supposed to be
able to do that without the password they’re getting around somewhere based
on the amount of time it takes and then the way that they say that it’s a
variable amount of time I think they’re doing some sort they’re turning off
somehow the protection for brute forcing your password right and then they’re
brute forcing all your that’s my question guessing guessing things do
that it’s happened to me we have we have an old iPhone 5c here and nobody knows
the passcode to it and I’m trying to guess it but now I think I have to wait
something like six months before I can try again
you ever tried that so if you try people who don’t may not know if you try if you
incorrectly input the passcode iOS will say you could try again in X amount of
time so eventually it gets longer the more times you fail and I’ve been
tempted to try keep trying so I can see how long I can go but I have to wait
that amount of time to fail again yes I don’t remember how long have to wait now
but it’s it’s been I think I got to like a week or something like that I don’t
remember but yeah because I want to see how far I can go so the other
speculation that that’s what was in it also on iOS it supposedly fixed the
issue where some screens that had been repaired on iphone 8 that would break
the device and that’s apparently fixed that’s yeah I read that yeah so update
your device’s back up first of course but you know update your devices we have
an article on our website that tells you how you can go about doing that since
we’re talking about news George Barry ass are we going to see err plate
before iOS well and a good question over-under on that what yeah the friggin
airpower where’s that yeah first I don’t know where that is either there’s not
hide nor hair of mention of that on Apple’s well maybe maybe they teased it
but man yeah there’s how hard is it to make a
charging pad well so they’re doing something special yeah charge rate kind
of thing and maybe that’s enough that’s also kind of a hidden feature of iOS
11.4 or something so they’ll love it not for betas out and I think that’s where
they’re finally gonna do iCloud messages which is in the beta yeah and and we’re
knocking on WOWT seized or it has to come out before W – see ya embarrassing features of allowance announced that
last year’s WWDC as iOS 11 few major features demoed on stage just were not
available by the next of you that would be kind of a watershed me Craig
Frederick you would have a sure some some funny jokes about it but yeah it’s
a bit of a it’s a bit out of character right and I mean it speaks to the whole
thing about you know should they announce features before they’re ready
and over-promising and under-delivering and blah blah blah what it’s a little
surprising that the charging pad that was announced now in September yeah you
haven’t asked anything about it it’s been what six months now I think
revealed at WWDC and I’m not basing that on anything too cautious yeah yeah we
don’t have a price they just when they announced it they said it’s gonna be
spring but they never said it’s spring so and then so as for airplay – it’s
like what we’ll say five weeks before WWDC so the overall rate how about May
30th it keeps us kind of creep it keeps kind of popping up it’s in the 11.4 beta
but then in beta – the stereo pairing part from home pods disappeared but the
other stuff about airplay – is there that’s not the stereo pairing for home
pods is not really an airplay to feature people kind of lump them in together
yeah so it might end up in an ILS 11.4 which really needs to come out before Apple also earlier this week announced a
MacBook Pro battery replacement program for the 13-inch model so non non touch
bar yeah I don’t know that there was a battery issue with the non touch bar
yeah I don’t think there was it was widely publicized it’s it’s narrow too
it’s not all the 13-inch non touch bars it’s those weighed in a certain
production lot so you have to go type your number into a form in on Apple site
and they’ll tell you and what’s interesting is that it’s so apparently
the battery swells but Apple says it isn’t a safety issue so I don’t know how
those two are not mutually exclusive but I guess they are I thought swallowing batteries were bad
news for people they have this problem with this because it’s this they’ve had
a couple of different versions of the launch of Apple watch that have had
swollen battery issues and and iPhones I mean today to their credit they’re
shipping 350 million batteries a year so some are gonna have it’s gonna all right
I mean failure rates on Apple’s products by any measure are tiny and not really
you know if if Samsung had this same issue you know it would be at the same
scale the same percentage of Units failing on a galaxy s 9 just by the
sheer numbers you wouldn’t even hear about it
it’d be like one guy no no it’s a good phone no it’s a fine phone and they sell
they sell 10 or 20 million of them but it’s just not at the same scale yeah so
if you have a 13-inch MacBook Pro without the touch bar and you bought it
for recently it says here manufactured
between October 2016 and 2017 so actually it’s not that recent there
prior October yeah but if you bought one during that window you might want to
check it out see if you can get your serial number with the about this Mac
window and just plug it into there’s a little field on Apple’s support date
yeah and I’ll tell you if it’s if it’s part of the program or not we have an
FAQ for people who are interested it’s on our website so check that out but you
know you don’t want to have a sit around with a bloated battery probably and
finally there was a study that came out believe this was by creative strategies
been badgering Pajero I don’t know how to say his last name it
was a satisfaction study of the of the iPhone 10 and what it found that there
was a that people who have an iPhone 10 are pretty much very very satisfied with
the iPhone 10 and its features except for one thing I think it’s pretty much
pretty obvious what that could be and a lot of people that it’s not the not the
match people don’t actually don’t mind the knotch that bad but you know it’s a
Siri and it’s interesting they have a chart on their website that shows like
it’s a bar chart they essentially graphed people’s satisfaction and
everything is above almost everything’s above well above 80% a lot of well above
90% and then way down in about 20% is Siri 20 20 % of the people who are yeah I mean it’s made me oh well maybe
they just don’t use other voice assistance and don’t know what they’re
missing but yeah that’s yeah and it’s what we’ve been saying all along this is
this is a really real sore spot and it has its tendrils throughout apple’s
ecosystem right this drags down all product but the other part of that has
traction study with that not only is the overall satisfaction rate for the iPhone
10 really high like for any consumer product like just being as high but the
number of people who say they’re very satisfied as opposed to just just
satisfied or dissatisfied is well above almost any other consumer electronics
gadget it’s people really love their iPhone day it’s I mean it’s a it’s a
hell of a phone I’ve used now the s9 and a bunch of Android phones that you know
have released and we’ll be releasing soon and it they just can’t compete the
quality of the screen the the impeccable nosov the design even you know Android
phones they’re all doing the notch now yeah that’s the thing has apples reason
was to make it balanced and symmetrical and because note that the bezels are
even all around they you know you can argue with the size of them they’re
small but they’re not like super small but the Android phones they have bezels
and then they have a chin and then they have like a little more space at the top
and it’s just like what are you doing yeah it’s like you have a notch and the
chin yeah and the bezels aren’t even everywhere and stuff it’s well why you
even have the knife I mean and the reason is because Apple’s design team is
just better they’re just you know they have to
engineer and certain things yeah they you know they engineer and they test
these things and they go through so many different prototypes until they get it
right yeah so obviously have more money but still so alpha kind of brings us up
as a joke but it’s sort of a real question was the no audio port on there
an option headphone jack and like for me wouldn’t you rather have a headphone
jack and worse Siri than better Siri and no headphone jack you know they don’t
date list creative strategies on their chart lists
categories that ranked high I don’t know if these are all the features that they
that they queried so I mean the iPhone Jack isn’t an iPhone 10 thing true I personally I don’t care I mean the pixel
doesn’t have one either a bunch of HTC phones don’t have I mean it’s it’s
becoming a trend Wireless just cuz it’s a trend doesn’t mean it’s a good trend I
mean it’s it’s it’s a matter of preference I’m happy with Bluetooth
headphones it’s nice you know it’s it’s annoying for me because I’m always
jumping back and forth between phones if I bring the wrong headphones I sometimes
can’t use them most people don’t have that problem you buy a phone you know
what you get you got your headphones and your said I don’t think it’s I don’t
think it’s a pain point anymore I think it’s an iPhone people yeah it’s
annoying but it’s nowhere on the I mean would I rather have a headphone jack and
worse Siri know if that was my choice then no access no air air pods are so
good like I don’t think it’s that big of an issue I’m surprised how much I like
air pods I really am yeah I finally got a pair of
ear pods and they’re they’re pretty awesome I was yeah I still don’t like
the look but they work really well I’m kind of surprised it’s funny how you
know I I agree to look as weird but you know Jason I have cords hanging out because it’s that little bit of weight
that’s pony oh yeah it’s a little tension and even though these are the
same shape the air pods are the same shape they don’t go anywhere they fit
fine I mow the lawn with them and stuff I just it’s great I love it yeah yeah if
we’re talking about products that butcher kill kill the ear pods for $30
that’s that that’s BS and give everyone a pair of ear pods with their iPhone oh
wow that would be something if they gave away for your pond yeah I mean just
raise the price by $100 they don’t seem to mind doing that speaking of no
headphone jack there was also another rumor that the se2 is in the works
and that it may not have a headphone jack that would be crazy for that’s
geared towards emerging markets of sorts and those people you know you’re not
gonna make them pay a hundred and fifty dollars for a pair of earbuds get like
well it comes down it’ll come with a pair of lightning your phone so I guess
that’s fine and the adapter maybe but still charging
yeah part of that was that maybe it’ll have wireless charging yeah which would
be cool that would help alleviate the what how do I listen to something in
charge its any of cheap wireless chargers out there charges pads and
things out there and that’s not that’s not a big cost and if it’s still four
hundred fifty bucks that would be a big deal and I always see on Amazon the
knockoff air pods so I always wondered like what I like this I’m I still like
that design I always wonder when I’m walking around how many people have real
ones and how many are are fake but there’s no San Francisco and they’re all
real I can tell you about the fake ones are just utter crap yeah someone I’m
sure there’s one or two out there that are fine but I tried for the biggest
thing that they do is you have to like pair them with each other like
separately there’s separate Bluetooth it’s it’s crazy complicated and they
sound horrible so my guess is most people are using regular air pods or
like Beats or something if they want a higher-end pair of bluetooth headphones
I mean in San Francisco pair pods is one tenth of your rent why not get the real
ones yeah isn’t it one twentieth of you rent at this point dan as an advocate of
smaller phones if the iPhone se two had no headphone jack you you wouldn’t you
wouldn’t use that phone I don’t know now I once you start getting I’m sorry to
get used to a larger phone so it’s hot but no it is I don’t know I don’t know
it’s tough yeah might be too late now I got too used to something larger what
are you using in would you settle on so right
now I’m on the pixel – well there you go that’s your problem it’s not that so the
regular the XL irregular regular okay oh okay
it’s still a lot bigger than just the size of like a regular iPhone hate or
something screen size wise they need to get the
bezels down on your regular non iPhone X phones five is it five-and-a-half Thea I
think it’s a yeah I think it’s an iPhone 8 i screen the pixel the small pixel –
yeah I wish it was slightly maybe it’s five it might be fine it’s 5 yeah yeah
it was a little small yeah I feel like if I was to buy a phone now if I had to
buy a phone now I would probably buy the 10 yeah yeah just you know like this has
been part of like a big experiment you know of you know Apple versus Android
and see it see how I feel you know but so you like you like iowa’s better yeah
that’s good that’s interesting cuz that’s that is as good as Android is
gonna get on that phone I know I know that’s it oh just the one part of that
comes down to what you’ve got your you know what not just what you’re used to
but you know you’ve got a history with an ecosystem you’ve got apps exactly
this other stuff and you just don’t want to give them up you know and I think the
big thing is like me and my friends have like four birthdays we do this drawing
thing I won’t say what we draw but I don’t get to do that I don’t get to see
the drawings anymore so I’m like missing out on all those features oh they do
that online message me yeah as everyone else is on my message yeah killer you
don’t want to be the guy nothing what is it come through I don’t see the
the drawing and so the last round they had to take a screenshot but then I
don’t get to see it being drawn and that’s part of you know the fun of it
mm-hmm interesting that’s interesting I would assume they would Apple would just
make that into like a mini movie and just you would think so yeah cuz that’s
how the face that’s how Samsung Samsung has a similar feature on the essay the
what they call it but yeah it just comes through as like a little movie that’s
also how I an emoji work I think right yeah nope interesting interesting
another product it should kill right before we finish this is that
ostentatious design book they make good coffee yes mention $300 depending on the
size and it’s not even it’s just pictures I can’t even believe they still
sell it I thought it was a limited edition like Christmas thing they did
but I found it on their website it’s like my god they still sell this thing
and there’s two versions yeah it’s just sighs it’s just a big one yeah so
speaking of things that should be killed I think that just about does it for this
week’s I like to thank Mike and Jason thanks guys thank you like to thank Dan
our producer thanks Dan Thank You Ellen I’d like to thank the audience thank you
for your comments and questions join us again next week we go live on Twitter
and Facebook at 10:00 a.m. Pacific so check you’ll have to do the time
conversion because I don’t have the text version in my head right now but it’s
10:00 a.m. Pacific time I know that’s one a 1 1 p.m. Eastern so but join us
with your counting questions for next week’s podcast we don’t have the time
just yet but we’ll let you know we try to let people know what the topics are
at least a day in advance and also if you’re interested in Apple’s earnings
that is on I believe Tuesday how’s that 5 o’clock so we’ll potentially talk
about Apple’s earnings you know there’s been so much talk about you know the
iPhone demand is terrible whatever stuff and when we probably won’t see the kind
of breakdown we’d like to see but just overall
units yeah yeah we’ll give us some indication and then you can see ya the
stocks been getting kind of hammered based on all those rumors so ABC yeah
I’m all the tech stock Scottie and everyone’s doing well such a market
anyway well that just does that does it for
this week’s show join us next week thank you very much

I don't think the iTunes app should go. I like it. I don't understand why it's so hated. I use it to store & organize the tunes I have riped or downloaded. I don't like that the App Store should've been taken out.

Disagree on the iPad mini. My wife loves the size of this and the iPad is too large. She had an iPad in the past but didn't like the size after a while. She loves the mini and even bought another one last Christmas. So, keep the iPad mini and update it.

iTunes serves an invaluable function for those of us who collect and catalog music, including DJs, archivists, people who play music while off the grid, and others. the Music app on iOS has an abysmal interface for anyone who really wants to organize a music library. Many of us live in a world where streaming isn't enough.